Slashdot Mirror
Why the Fax Machine Refuses To Die
snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia waxes befuddled on the ongoing existence of the fax machine. 'Consider what a fax machine actually is: a little device with a sheet feeder, a terrible scanning element, and an ancient modem. Most faxes run at 14,400bps. That's just over 1KB per second — and people are still using faxes to send 52 poorly scanned pages of some contract to one another. Over analog phone lines. Sometimes while paying long-distance charges! The mind boggles,' Venezia writes. 'If something as appallingly stupid as the fax machine can live on, it makes you wonder how we make progress at all. Old habits die hard. It just goes to show you: Bad technology generally isn't the problem; it's the people who persist in using that technology rather than embracing far superior alternatives.'"
Judges think that. Not because they want to, but because it has been accepted by the courts. It takes years to get a new technology accepted for the purpose, it's expensive, complicated, and very difficult. New technology can still be used even if it hasn't got blanket acceptance, you will just need to pay hundreds of dollars (possibly several thousand) to have an expert testify to how the technology works.
Since the fax machine does the job for legal purposes, even if it sucks somewhat, it doesn't suck enough to warrant the effort of getting a court to accept the new technology. That and the new technology (even though faxes have these problems, they can be ignored--remember, they are accepted already) easily has security holes unless you get pretty specialized (as far as lawyers are concerned). That means it isn't one size fits all. That means it's dead before it gets off the ground.
Do you know how difficult it was (and may still be) just to get a court to accept a digital picture? Because they can be "faked" (not that "regular" photos can't be, especially since the printing process can often be digital anyways). Even REALLY low standard courts like traffic court, I've seen them reject digital photo evidence. Getting a court like that to accept, say, a GPG key? Not a chance.
Hell, this even works to the government's detriment. For YEARS in Ontario you could fight a LIDAR (laser radar) speeding ticket because the technology wasn't accepted by the courts (it is now) and that meant the prosecution would need to hire, at several hundred, possibly thousand, dollars an expert from the company to prove the LIDAR gun was better than a chair at measuring speed. All that for a $150 speeding ticket? Not likely. Red light tickets got thrown out for years because they didn't meet evidence standards. Why? The date and time of the offence was not integrated into the photo itself, instead it was provided separately (possibly below the picture or on the back of it, or actually separately) and an officer would sign off that it is true. Not enough to pass court standards.
So, hell no, fax machines, as crap as they are, they are plenty enough at this point. Find me a computer technology that is still 100% backwards compatible for 30 years that provides even the slightest amount of usefulness like a fax and we might be talking.